Mod Support

CorruptedHeart

I'm curious to find out what the SA game developers' view on mod support. If it is considered, factored into development time, or just not considered due to added development concerns and time.

Some of us, I'm sure, has seen how modding has essentially brought games "back from the dead". A fairly simple reference would be the DayZ mod for Arma 2 that has made it feature in the top 10 Seller list on Steam for the last 2-3 months now. (A game that was released in 2009).

So is mod support considered? Or is the time and development costs of supporting mods too much to consider?

ShadowBlade

For me (and our team) mod support is very important. We started on our game-dev path with modding, so it's an important thing for us :)

Beyond that, we factor in modding at the earliest stages of development really. With just about everything we add, we're always thinking how easy it will be to work with for someone else. All the systems need to be modder friendly.

It is more work if you're serious about adding good mod support, but I'd say worth it. I can think of so many games that could benefit from some goddamn mods :(

edg3

Another important thing to note about your game being easy to mod, it means when you want to add or change things it becomes easy for you too (you could essentially have the main version of your game be a mod of itself, meaning you add content/etc like you would a mod).

I havent really built modding support into any of my games, but it is definitely something to think about going forward.

dislekcia

Modding depends on the game, I feel. Engine-heavy work tends to lend itself to modding, especially if you focus on tools for your in-house team at the outset. It's not too hard to turn those tools into things other people can use later on.

That said, I don't think that mod support is that viable for a small company - you're going to be working your asses off just to finish the game. Writing and polishing tools and documentation on top of that is a tall order. We keep getting asked to make DD moddable by our forum users and right now that would be really time consuming. Note that it's not impossible, but it would just take so much time to turn the code-based system we're building the game with into a set of data-driven tools that anyone could use. Our time is better spent building the actual game part ;)

Sometimes you do get freebies though: The DD alpha let users import their own graphics, which really helped the game reach more people and even got us in contact with a bunch of awesome artists who enjoyed what they could do to the game. I think @ShadowBlade's also got the benefit of not having to worry about building the modding tools for his stuff, they're already using the UDK, so it's more a matter of making sure things play nice with other mods - leaving handles for mutators, that sort of thing. Any time you can do something like that to get more people more engaged in your game, go for it.

ShadowBlade

I agree with both @edg3 and @dislekcia here. Modding has it's pros and cons, but I think that if you have budget/time, then there really is no reason not to add support. I love modding; I love the idea of modding. We still have guys modding our mods for UT2k4, and that's awesome.
As @dislekcia says though, we have the benefit of working on a well known, wide-spread, and relatively well documented engine, so this certainly isn't always a possibility for everyone :)

Tuism

yeah of course, it largely depends on the nature of the game and the nature of the team. If it's a moddable game and you have resources, it definitely is a major plus.

But for example... Bubble Bobble wouldn't be moddable. Much. Well look at that can of worms I just opened up :)

CorruptedHeart

It is entirely up to the game style and so forth as to whether it can support even modding.

However, it could entirely be possibly to add "mod" support to games such as the Match 3 variety, Bubble Poppers and the like. I use the term "mod" support because it could essentially be something as simple as allowing sprites to be changed.